


A Hundred Miles Through the Desert

by HessianLikeTheBoot



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Curses, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Manipulative Peter, Werewolf Sheriff Stilinski, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:35:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HessianLikeTheBoot/pseuds/HessianLikeTheBoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles had <em>felt</em> the Nemeton’s frisson of pleasure at Derek’s renewed alphahood, so there might be something to that idea. Generations of Hales tied to the land, by the blood they’d given to the very soil. </p><p>Also: ...what was there to say? <em>Sorry Peter is Peter, and persists in Petering it up all over the joint… but, this is new -- guess how long it’s been going on for!</em></p><p>In short: Curses, my pretties. <em>Curses</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Miles Through the Desert

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Mary Oliver’s poem, _“Wild Geese” _:__
> 
> You do not have to be good.  
> You do not have to walk on your knees  
> For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.  
> You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
> love what it loves.  
> Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
> Meanwhile the world goes on.  
> Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain  
> are moving across the landscapes,  
> over the prairies and the deep trees,  
> the mountains and the rivers.  
> Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,  
> are heading home again.  
> Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  
> the world offers itself to your imagination,  
> calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —  
> over and over announcing your place  
> in the family of things.

“A curse,” Derek said, utterly flat.

Stiles hated that toneless, empty impression of his voice, which properly belonged to Derek version 1.0. Derek was wearing 1.0’s blank expression (a.k.a. The Mask of the Grieving and Overwhelmed), too, and that was equally lousy. At least both the voice and the face were directed toward the head of the Reno coven, rather than at Stiles. 

They were sitting in the back of a dingy shop in a strip mall, and Stiles was fiercely regretting suggesting the trip in the first place. The sheer fact of Peter Hale’s continued existence was a tribute to Derek’s perennial, perennially misplaced love for his uncle. But if there ever a time when he wasn’t Peter’s pawn, Stiles was having trouble seeing it. Moreover, it was now obvious Derek had hoped Stiles was mistaken, that a step or a connection had been missed somewhere in his months of research. 

Stiles found he couldn’t even be offended by the lack of faith in his abilities, because he wished he’d been wrong, too. Everything was all so much worse than he’d imagined.

 

# *****

 

Derek had returned to Beacon Hills, sans Cora, in the year after Scott and Stiles’ high school graduation. Stiles wandered into the police station after morning classes at the community college (he was on the criminal justice track, while Scott was undecided; both were trying to save on costs by knocking out general education reqs before transferring to four-year colleges) to cajole his father into lunching at the new soup and salad place. Instead he found Derek Hale in the sheriff’s office, right in the middle of shaking John’s hand. 

Then they all went out for tuna melts at the diner up the street. 

Cora was in school in New York, where Derek had recently finished up an environmental science degree. Derek, who was wearing a cozy-looking cardigan rather than a leather jacket. Derek, who walked Stiles to his car after lunch, looked into his eyes, and apologized for his past behavior. For Stiles, in light of the nonstop slaughter carnival that made up the majority of his high school years, this was ancient history that had been forgiven ages ago. Stiles apologized, too, as something was clearly in the air and, also, why the hell not, because for two guys who’d saved one another’s lives a bunch of times they’d argued a lot. 

Derek had smiled at him, this soft, tentative, lovely thing, and afterwards Stiles made a beeline to Deaton’s to have the vet/Druid/tutor/cryptic mime of a man give him the once-over for head injuries or magical interference. Stiles had been pronounced “clean, for certain values of clean, but neurotic.” When Stiles and Scott went over to Derek’s new house on the eastern edge of the preserve, equipped with a welcome-home casserole, he’d subtly run through a few minor checks of his own, too. For safety’s sake. Derek stayed Derek, just this relaxed, gentler version of him, and invited them to dinner.

 

# *****

 

A few months later Isaac was also back in Beacon Hills, escaping from whatever vineyard in the South of France Chris Argent had ditched him in; his scarf collection had trebled and his strange accent (“Stiles, his mother was English, leave it alone!” Scott had scolded in a whisper, as Finstock puzzled out a diagram on the whiteboard, years ago; Claudia had been from New York, so it’s not like Stiles himself had a lot of wiggle room, it was just something he reliably noticed) was even more deliriously spotty than before. In the morning Isaac sounded like a tipsy Jacques Pepin, and too late at night he sounded like a stoned Werner Herzog. Stiles wondered what time of day the change-over happened, but finding out would have meant spending time with the guy and he decided he wasn’t that invested. 

That spring a kiss of vampires showed up, possibly drawn to the sputtering Nemeton or the milkshakes at Mabel’s or simply the Hell-mouthiness that was Beacon Hills. Scott, Stiles and Derek were in Derek’s dining room, maps spread out on the table. Half the wallpaper, in a busy ribbons-and-bouquets pattern, had been scraped off and wires dangled from the center of the ceiling, awaiting a new lighting fixture; why Derek had bought a fixer, Stiles couldn’t say.

“So, um, are you still in touch with Braeden?” Scott asked.

“No.”

Argent was away on business, and a lovelorn Parrish had gone on walkabout, which finally explained _that _dodgy accent.__

“It’s just, you know, we could really use the -–“

Derek wrinkled the little fold of skin between his eyebrows and said, “Scott, there was a bounty on my head.”

Scott nodded, and when he said, “Oh, so you parted ways to protect -–," Stiles rolled his eyes so hard he practically detached a retina. Scott looked at Stiles, then at Derek, then back at Stiles again. “ _Oooh _. Oh, Derek, oh man, I’m sorry.” He tried out a compassionate, manly clap on Derek’s shoulder, while Stiles went and pulled more sodas from the fridge.__

Hours later, when he and Scott were at the McCalls’ and playing the latest Assassins’ Creed, Scott said, “It’s terrible, it’s like he’s cursed or something.” 

And honestly? Stiles had been thinking the exact same thing for a good while now, and had recently begun a secret research project. “It’s that devil vagina magic,” Stiles replied, instead. Ms. McCall was passing by the doorway at that moment, and nailed him in the head with a tasseled throw pillow (she’d been a fast-pitch softball champion in high school, and still took the mound in her ladies’ league at least twice a month, barring supernatural shenanigans), so Stiles wound up gutted like a fish while trying to pick a pocket in the souk.

 

# *****

 

Jackson was back, too, within weeks of Isaac’s re-appearance; he was similarly lithe and bored-looking. His parents still owned several houses in town, and he was living in the one in the gated community on the western edge of the preserve; Stiles had no idea how Lydia was there so often given her grueling Stanford course load. He suspected some sort of Rowlingesque time-turner device, but decided he didn’t want to know. Jackson mostly slouched around glamorously, deigned to attend pack meetings, and seemed baffled by the non-Lydia company he was keeping. He’d had his tiny Aston-Martin shipped to Beacon Hills, a car that barely held two people and was all but useless on the county back roads. 

One day Stiles went over to Derek’s place, briefly watched Jackson watching Derek hose the blood out of his latest practical auto purchase, and was struck by the horrible thought that Jackson might have been the smartest out of all of them –- figuring out the werewolf business initially, seeking out the bite, and hightailing it out of town fairly early in the hideousness, while the going was relatively good. (In contrast, even Danny had stayed until the middle of their junior year of high school, before taking early admission to CalTech.) This was the guy who made his own fortune playing for Arsenal and being the “face” of an exclusive line of men’s colognes. (Stiles had asked about modeling and lens flare, and Jackson had shaken his head and said, “Colored contacts, numbnuts,” while his tone clearly conveyed, _How is it you’re still breathing, numbnuts _. Most infuriatingly, he refused to tell Stiles if David Gandy was a werewolf.)__

This was also the guy who had managed to give Lydia enough time to put their doomed high school romance into perspective and mourn him properly; enough time to grow bored with Jordan Parrish’s earnestness and, consequently, be vulnerable to the siren song of ‘true love’ once more. Stiles tore his eyes away from Derek’s wet t-shirt to look at Jackson again, who was, inexplicably, taking a selfie of his raised eyebrows. He reminded Stiles of someone just then, lounging in a chaise longue on what was passing for a front lawn, his handsome head tilted back and the line of his neck long and strong… 

Derek pitched a chamois cloth at Stiles’ face before he could work out who it was. 

Jackson’s accent had changed, too, going crisp at the edges, and Stiles allowed himself two exclamations of “Cor, blimey!” a week and as many “Gov’NAH”s as needed; he’d found it necessary to dole out simple pleasures in recent years, and had devised his own reward system.

For example, in the Scott-mandated weekly pack meetings he was permitted to stare at Derek’s hands twice and sneak looks at his mouth exactly four times; gazing into his eyes was unlimited provided Derek was actually speaking, because that was just polite. “You’re fooling no one,” Scott quietly informed him as they headed out to the cars at midnight one Friday. Jackson had hosted, and The True Alpha ™ was balancing a sleeping Kira in one arm and a few boxes of leftover pizza in the other. Scott did a complicated maneuver with the furrows of his forehead, which meant: _Why can’t let yourself be happy, Stiles_ , but also: _Derek, really_?, as well as: _Be a pal and fish my keys out of my pocket, wouldja_? Stiles sighed and walked over to help him; he’d budgeted a hundred Scott-related sighs a week but he was all out of eye rolls.

Stiles had dated around a bit, when things were quiet, but once he realized he never wanted to inflict his occasional screaming nightmares on an overnight guest his budding relationships always fizzled out. Plus trying to keep his ongoing involvement with the supernatural side on the DL was a pain. But even when that wasn’t an issue… for instance, he’d squired one of Kira’s distant cousins around town for nearly a month, only to find he was oddly relieved when Jason returned to Seattle. Stiles drove to Derek’s place straight from the airport to learn he’d finished the new deck by himself, while the neglected, doomed wallpaper drooped in the June heat.

 

# *****

 

Malia was long gone. Her father had taken her on a cross-country trip right after graduation, to visit family and to try to bond after so many years apart, and Mr. Tate had gotten a job offer in Maryland. For all her talk of _mates_ and _forever_ , Malia had broken up with Stiles fairly clinically over the phone, and her Instagram feed was cluttered with pictures of some blond from her Intro to Psychology seminar within the month. “So, Kyle seems like a good guy…” Scott began, on his way into the Stilinski house. Catching sight of Stiles on the sofa, clad only in a pair of boxers, with a gallon of ice cream in one hand and an ice-cream scoop in the other, he continued, “… too bad we despise him.” He sprawled down next to Stiles. “What are we watching? Titanic, classic. What is that, Rocky Road?” 

“Get your own,” Stiles slurred.

“Dude, that’s a gallon, don’t you think -–“

“No.” Stiles swallowed the mass of ice cream in his mouth, trusting the icy blast would go straight to his forehead. “I mean I overbought, there’s a lot more that wouldn’t fit in the freezer melting on the counter.” 

Scott wandered away and came back with a wooden cooking spoon and a soggy brick of Neapolitan upended in a mixing bowl. “Is it too soon to remind you that you found her kind of smothering?”  


Stiles tilted his head, considering. “Yes.”

Midway through The Notebook, Scott said, “It’s good she’s away from Peter,” which, point. One of these days Peter was going to come through the door in a cape, twirling his moustache, and Stiles was going to demand that Scott cough up the $20 he’s owed before they and everyone they loved died horrible, lingering deaths.

 

# *****

 

“Just _don’t _,” Stiles said.__

Derek, huddled in the back seat, could only gurgle in response. Three vampires had caught them strolling through the cinema parking lot after the late show, and Derek’s favorite cardigan, the one with the elbow patches and the good pockets, was a complete loss.

“Exactly.” Stiles was firm. “Scott is meeting us at Deaton’s, and everything is going to be fine. Do you hear me?” It was two in the morning, and theirs was the sole car on the road. One of the good things about Derek’s penchant for sensible, fuel-conscious rides was that he didn’t care who was behind the wheel. Stiles chanced a glance back at Derek. This was an embarrassing, rookie mistake, as Derek had listed onto his side and tipped his intestines onto the floor. 

Stiles straightened back up. “ **FINE** , I said.”

For years, Stiles had nursed a frequent daydream in which he confessed his epic, matchless love to Derek right before he expired of some puny, human-prone injury, thus avoiding any unpleasant, unrequited-related fallout. In these fantasies, the lighting was always very flattering, and Derek, especially after this most recent homecoming, was appropriately teary-eyed. Whatever it was killing Stiles didn’t make him cough up any blood, either, in case there was a dying pity smooch in the offing. 

Derek routinely died in Stiles’ nightmares, though, so he tried to be discreet when he was counting their fingers in Deaton’s never-not-creepy surgery.

 

# *****

 

Stiles liked to think of the Camaro and his Jeep, his Roscoe, together in a sort of vehicular Valhalla. Revving their engines, making lazy donuts around one another in a perfectly paved parking lot, forever. But he couldn’t think of it for too long without being reminded of _Cars _, the animated film, and freaking himself out about that one particularly gruesome character living in the auto-parts junkyard.__

Still, he asked Derek if his old car had a name. They were sitting out on the back porch later that week, drinking beer as the sun went down, and they’d spent most of the day in easy, companionable silence despite the remodeling work they’d been doing. “It was Laura’s car,” Derek reminded him. Laura’s car, his father’s jacket, and even Scott had been Peter’s wolf first; didn’t Derek want anything was just his, and his alone? Stiles turned, opened his mouth to say something he’d probably regret, and caught sight of the new kitchen flooring peeking out from under a tarp on the far side of the porch. He abruptly switched tracks. “Do you want to go check the paint swatches in the living room? The light’s changed enough, I think.” 

Avoiding the argument was worth it, because right before he left, Derek said, “Laura called it the Falcon. She was pretty nerdy,” and, “Mine’s Rachel.”

“For… Carson?” Stiles hazarded, and was rewarded with a shy smile.

(Stiles’ current car was a used commuter special; the stripped-down interior meant every trip was a teeth-rattling extravaganza, and not in an endearing, Jeep-y way. Stiles had been driving the car for going on four years and still hadn’t named it, and once in a great while he felt a guilty pang for that. But he reasoned he had far better things to feel guilt over, and didn’t dwell.)

 

# *****

 

After the vampire’s kiss eradication (blood! magic! fire! Derek appeared absolutely nauseated afterward), Stiles offered Isaac a friendly, “Nice work, Tintin!” as they left the clearing and gotten a glare in response. “Would you rather I’d said Rin-Tin-Tin?” was his weak follow-up. Isaac only croaked, “You know I can’t understand you when your teeth are out, Grandpa,” lisping around his fangs in a laconic, Herzogian drawl, as the tattered edges of his cerulean scarf fluttered valiantly in the pre-dawn breeze, and Stiles had laughed until he cried against the fender of Derek’s Honda Humdrum. Judging from Scott’s reaction it might've been meant as a roundabout Nogitsune dig, but hilarious was hilarious.

In August, Peter sent a new chandelier for Derek’s dining room. The fixture was an elegant marriage of traditional and modern, and its finish and proportions suited the room flawlessly. Stiles circled the shipping box sitting on the table, utterly unnerved; no one had seen Peter within the county limits in years. Hell, just yesterday Stiles had walked in and caught Derek speaking _Basque _on the phone, Scott all but wringing his hands, because Peter’s machinations had taken on an international flavor and packs from around the globe got in touch every few months to vent their spleen. “Please tell me you’re not keeping this.”__

Derek leaned in the doorway, drying his hands on a dishcloth. “Oh, no.”

They both considered the box.

“It _is _perfect, though.”__

Derek sighed. “Yeah.”

 

# *****

 

Scott was waiting for Stiles when his astronomy class let out the second Tuesday in October. The first words out of his mouth were, “Your dad’s okay,” because Deucalion had returned with a shiny new plan to rule Beacon Hills, and step one in said plan was making the Sheriff his beta.

When they ran into the house, Derek was on the Stilinski sofa with an afghan draped over his shoulders. The new hole in the living-room wall framed the two three-foot-long, tarp-wrapped bundles out by the forsythia. Beside the bushes, Ms. McCall, still in safety goggles, was toweling off a chainsaw. Stiles looked at Derek, who looked back with red eyes, and Jackson and Isaac materialized out of nowhere.

Stiles stumbled away to the kitchen, heading straight for his father's arms, and they sat on the floor as they counted breaths together. There was a water bottle pressed into his hand at some point; maybe it was Scott’s doing, he couldn’t be sure. John had to unscrew the cap for him.

Sometime later, after Isaac and Jackson had taken Derek home, Beacon General’s finest head nurse/lumberjack had left for her evening shift, and Scott and Kira were patrolling the yard, John sipped from his tumbler and asked, “Is there anything you want to tell me?” At Stiles’ raised eyebrows, John sighed and started again. “Specifically, about your relationship with Derek?”

“What do you mean?” His father didn’t have so much as a scratch, and Stiles vowed, as God as his witness, to finish stripping the rest of that hideous wallpaper himself.

“It was mainly a lot of posturing, until Deucalion mentioned your name. Then Derek shoved the Tiffany lamp into his mouth until it exited the back of his skull, tackled him clean through the wall, and ripped out his throat.”

Stiles pondered for a moment. “You never liked that lamp,” he offered.

“True.” John contemplated his son’s pale face, and all but telegraphed his decision to let him off the conversational hook. “And now I’m thinking French doors.”

 

Stiles tried to call Derek a few times that night, and eventually Jackson answered. “He ran for hours, and now he’s asleep on the sofa.” 

“Okay. Okay, can you tell him,” Stiles began, “Tell him -–“

“He knows, you idiot,” Jackson said, which was possibly the nicest thing he’d ever said to him, so Stiles hung up before he started crying in earnest.

 

(John did order a nice set of French doors from an outfit down in Los Angeles, and Derek was the one to install them.)

 

# *****

 

The lights were out, and neither of them had slept yet. Stiles was chockfull of bad ideas, whether or not the rest of the wolves scattered around the upper floor of the McCall house could hear them. He whispered anyway. “Tell me a secret.”

Derek hummed. “What if I tell you a suspicion, instead?” He’d stood by Scott hours ago, his roar echoing through the Preserve to send the gnome swarm a message. Now they were sacked out in sleeping bags, and his voice was so small, just big enough for the curve of Stiles’ ear. 

“Oh, even better. That way if it comes true, I can have a smug, all-knowing look on my face.”

“You do enjoy that.” Derek took a deep breath, and Stiles shivered as he felt the exhale against his neck. “I think Jackson is Peter’s biological son.” Stiles was quick to agree, because: Cheekbones? Check. Imperiousness? Check. Conviction that he’s everyone’s type? Checkity check check.

“Do you think that’s why you bit him, back in the hazy, crazy days of new alphahood? Because he already smelled pack-ish?”

“Maybe?”

“How many women do you suppose Peter’s knocked up?”

“That’s the thing -- I think it was just the one, and that she was only a teenager at the time.” Derek took another breath. “I think Jackson takes after Peter, and that his twin looks more like their mother… that Malia looks more like Kate.”

Stiles freed his arm, and reached out to clasp Derek’s hand. His mind went clicking along, considering the shifting shifter profiles of those four individuals, their amazing death-defying habits, and the sheer amount of magic that swirled around each one. “You think your mom used the alpha memory trick?”

“It would have been my grandmother, then. And maybe when it was done to-to _her _, something went wrong. Or went wrong with the both of them? Or nothing was done, at all, so it just… festered. Anyway. Maybe what happened was more personal than hunters versus werewolves. My family founded Beacon Hills, maybe everything that goes on here is more personal than anyone imagined.”__

Stiles had _felt _the Nemeton’s frisson of pleasure at Derek’s renewed alphahood, so there might be something to that idea. Generations of Hales tied to the land, by the blood they’d given to the very soil.__

Derek’s fingers flexed, tightening around Stiles’ knuckles. “It’s a lot of maybes,” he said softly, material rustling as he shrugged. “And it would be pretty convenient, for me, if it were true, so.”

“No, I think – listen, can I show you something? If you’ll come by in a couple of days? You won’t like it, necessarily, I mean, you definitely won’t -- but you should see it.” 

“Sure,” Derek said, and they both finally fell asleep on the floor of the McCall living room. 

 

Three days later, Stiles knelt and pulled the file envelope from the hiding place under the floorboards in his closet. He turned back to see that Derek had gone red in the face.

“Um, that’s where you keep some of your porn,” Derek said. “And… such.”

“Yeah, only on top, as a deterrent. See, that’s why this is wrapped in plastic,” Stiles said, unruffled; he did what he could to appease sensitive werewolf noses but saw no reason to go overboard. He fished out the packet and handed it, wordlessly, to Derek, because what was there to say? _Sorry Peter is Peter, and persists in Petering it up all over the joint… but, this is new -- guess how long it’s been going on for!_

Stiles went downstairs, and when he came back up an hour later, laden with a tray of sandwiches, his window was open and his painstaking research was back in its plastic and waiting on the desk. The note on top read, _when do we leave _, which was promising. But the lack of capitalization or punctuation -- and the subsequent method of egress -- reeked of old-school miserable Derek, which was depressing. At least his work, including all the months of correspondence, showed that killing Peter outright would most likely worsen matters, so Stiles wasn’t too worried that Derek was out doing that. He crammed half a sandwich in his mouth and set about emailing the various packs for the necessary territory travel permissions. Like most werewolves of Stiles’ acquaintance, Derek hated to fly.__

 

# *****

 

After John Stilinski was shot four times in the chest during an attempted gas station robbery, Derek gave him the bite. 

(“He wasn’t even on duty,” Stiles wept into Scott’s shoulder, as they sat vigil that night.) 

Stiles had been waiting in the car, fiddling with his phone and looking up pumpkin pie recipes; old habits died hard, apparently, because after the gunshots he was calling Derek before he was even conscious he’d left his seat. The clerk, unharmed, had locked himself in the restroom at the Sheriff’s command, and Stiles yelled for him to stay there; the would-be robbers had already fled through the doors on the other side of the store. As Stiles wadded up his sweatshirt and pressed it against the worst of the wounds he muttered healing incantations, kicking himself for slacking on his training. Derek was there within minutes, and together they hoisted John into the backseat and sped off. Derek was having a whispered conversation with the Sheriff but Stiles, in the driver’s seat, couldn’t hear anything over the pounding in his ears. 

 

# *****

 

Polishing off his second bacon cheeseburger, John said, “You know, I always liked that guy.”

“That is a filthy lie.”

There were three more burgers, still in their polystyrene take-away boxes, on the table, and another full order of curly fries keeping warm in the oven. His father was laughing, and looked at least ten years younger; Stiles couldn’t stop staring, no, _gazing _at him. Were his teeth whiter? His teeth were whiter.__

Lydia and Jackson had tracked the robbers to an empty house on the outskirts of town, and after John was done with dinner he was heading over there to positively identify and arrest them.

“You know, I think I’m going to start running again,” John mused. 

“You – when – _running _?”__

“Yep.” He opened a new burger box, and started on the side of fries. “Five miles a day, most days of the week. Stopped a couple of months before you were born, didn’t like being away from the house more than I had to be. Should be even better like this, no shin splints." John paused to swig from a bottle of root beer. "Sure you don’t want any fries? Maybe I should find the thermometer.”

But he picked up the next burger, instead, and Stiles, who had been awake for the better part of two days, cleared his throat. “Dad, I’m sorry -– I’m so sorry that you didn’t have a choice,” Stiles began, horrified to hear his voice breaking.

“What? No, son, Derek asked -– he asked me. Years ago, actually, and then he made sure my answer hadn’t changed. C’mere.” He leaned forward to put his hand on Stiles’ forehead, and the easy familiarity of it soothed them both. “You are burning up.”

“That’s you, Dad.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You’re a molten furnace of a man, now.” 

“Explains all the shirtlessness.”

“Don’t go getting any ideas. What do you mean, years ago?”

“After I was ‘in the know,’” He laid a finger alongside his nose, leaving a greasy ketchup smear; Stiles handed him a paper napkin, and picked up one himself to dab at his own forehead. “Derek said it was ‘just in case’ at the time. Guy wasn’t even an alpha, then, I don’t think? Whatever. But he said you and Scott would be too busy arguing and the window of opportunity might close, so my answer should be on file with somebody.” John attacked his burger with renewed vigor. “Kid, I would never leave you willingly, of course I’d take the chance. You two really need to work on your communication skills.” 

“Scott and I communicate great.”

“Yeah, that’s who I meant,” John said around a mouthful of bacon-y goodness, and rolled his eyes. Then Ms. McCall sailed into the house, bearing a strawberry cheesecake, and Stiles skulked back upstairs to consider these new developments. 

Derek Hale was spread out like a banquet on the bed, reading a Deadpool comic, and, exhausted as he was, Stiles’ inner sixteen-year-old rejoiced. “You were right, I didn’t like the sequel,” he told Stiles. 

“Yeah, well. Good casting, but superhero movies have been kind of disappointing as of late.” Stiles closed the door, and toed off his shoes to lay down beside him. “Budge up. What we need are supervillain movies.”

“It’s God-Emperor Doom’s time to shine,” Derek agreed, not moving over at all. He closed the comic book and folded his hands on his chest.

“What happens now?”

“Well, your dad can eat like the average American teen without any repercussions, will be even better at his job…” Derek paused, listening. “And he’ll ask out Melissa, possibly, now that his high-risk occupation isn’t so highly risky.” There was a crash of plates downstairs, and Stiles sat up in a hurry. Derek only curled toward him, smiling, and eased him back down with a hand to the shoulder. “His hearing is hyper-sensitive right now, that’s all.”

Stiles settled back on the bed, acutely aware of Derek’s hand. “Super deluxe, before going to regular deluxe?”

“In a couple more days, yeah.” Derek was whispering back, and his face was awfully close.

“I don’t think he can pull off a leather jacket, Derek.”

Derek smothered a laugh into his shoulder. “It’s not like it was before, I’m not like I was before. I’m not… frantic.” He shifted a little closer, his hand drifting down to rest over Stiles’ heart. “John’s like a father to Scott. I’m glad you called me first, it’s better this way.” And Stiles knew he was right. Especially if the bite had not taken, Derek was right. 

Stiles felt his stomach roil, and changed the topic.

“The only holdout for Reno is Alpha Gonzales, even if we flew in -- don’t give me that face -- instead of taking the road trip it’s still a problem,” Stiles said. “Deaton is working on it, but maybe over winter break?” January, so they would both be around for John’s first full moon… which meant Derek wouldn’t be going to New York to spend the holidays with Cora, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be heading west. Cora was never setting foot in Beacon Hills again, if she could swing it, and Stiles could hardly blame her.

“Sounds good,” Derek said, yawning. He pushed his face into Stiles’ pillow in a nuzzling gesture that had somehow become habitual, and was slowly driving Stiles mad. “Set an alarm, will you? You’re tired, too.” Stiles did, and was, but even after he switched off the bedside lamp there was enough light from the window to see Derek’s face, and looking at him won out over sleeping any day.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: This work was to going to be the first part of a larger series, but I was never able to get the next installment right. If that should ever change, I'll update the format and forge on from there; otherwise, I'm amending this to a single entry as of December 2016. As always, many, many thanks to you for reading.


End file.
